Given my recent leap into the Windows 64-bit world of desktop computing I’ve been experimenting with a lot of 64-bit stuff, including the web browsing experience.

The reality of the matter is that what’s available for 64-bit browsing just plain sucks.

Let’s take a look at what’s available:

The player

Windows Internet Explorer

Only one modern stable release, Internet Explorer 8. Comes bundled with 64-bit editions of Windows 7 – and fortunately can be run side-by-side with the 32-bit version so you’re not forced into using 64-bit alone.

Mozilla Firefox

No official 64-bit releases – yet. We’ll most likely see that with Firefox 4. You can download unofficial x64 releases here. They are all up-to-date, but again, not official.

Google Chrome

No official 64-bit editions. And in fact Chrome didn’t even work right in 64-bit Windows originally. It does now and v7 works great, but still 32-bit only.

Opera

No official 64-bit editions. There was (and maybe still is) an unofficial 64-bit build for the Linux platform, but you’d be better off using 32-bit for stability’s sake.

IE8 is the best choice for 64-bit browsing in Windows?

Basically, yes. IE8 64-bit is official, is stable and runs like it’s supposed to. I’m not saying it’s the best browser, but in this case it’s the only browser in 64-bit world that doesn’t run like a wonky piece of crap; that’s why I titled the above head "The Player" and not "The Players," because nobody else has any official x64 release of a browser for Windows other than Microsoft.

The two things needed to browse comfortably with a 64-bit browser?

Java and Flash.

As of very recently (as in Sep. 27 2010 recent,) Adobe Flash Player 64-bit "Square" Preview Release 2 is good enough to use in IE8 64-bit.

Java has a 64-bit version that is official and runs nicely.

Yes, this does mean you’ll have two Javas and two Flashes installed, one for 32 and one for 64. It’s not that big of a deal, but a tad annoying you have to do it.

Is it all speedy and awesome when using 64-bit browsing?

Not really.

Memory

I compared memory usage between the 32 and 64-bit browsers. It’s about the same. Whether loading a single web page, multiple tabs or many multiple tabs, you’re not going to see any real difference when it comes to which uses more or less memory.

Flash

Flash performance is not notably improved, but in the same token did not get any worse. I don’t even know if that’s good or bad because Flash in general is a beast to begin with.

Java

Java did improve in performance. Load times were notably quicker and my computer didn’t have to "think" as much to do things that required Java to run. I attribute this not to the browser but rather Java itself utilizing the 64-bit architecture properly.

"Heavy" web pages

Web sites these days are mostly designed to be slim and trim, but there are still a few out there like Facebook and YouTube that are by nature "heavy." A 64-bit browser definitely works with these better. It’s not about the memory any specific page would need to render, but rather how the browser handles large amounts of data. The 64-bit environment with native 64-bit apps can crunch data a whole lot better than 32-bit can.

Let’s say for the moment you encounter a web page that was a converted Word DOC that resulted in a ginormous HTML file 5MB in size. Let’s add to that and say there’s some poorly programmed JavaScript and some big-for-the-sake-of-big images in there. That’s a web page that will bring any 32-bit browser to its knees in short order, but not for 64-bit. The browser will load that page, do it quickly and most importantly not crash.

The likelihood of you encountering web pages like that these days are fairly slim, but they do exist. Fortunately, you have to throw at least three times the amount of garbage at a 64-bit browser compared to a 32-bit to kill it.

Two live examples of pages that will kill most 32-bit browsers: Under Construction and Email Me. These are pages  that are nothing but animated GIFs and will crash most browsers. It’s most likely true you’ll survive "Under Construction," but "Email Me" is more or less guaranteed to kill your browser because it has 8,000+ images in it. However, IE8 64-bit can actually handle it. While loading you’ll still be able to use your computer, open other tabs and so on. Chrome 32-bit can mostly survive "Email Me" because each tab is a separate process, but the process being used to load up the page will most likely hose on you.

If you dare try this in 64-bit IE8 and "Email Me" tries to load but doesn’t, note that the browser didn’t crash on you. It may stop midway through for whatever reason, but the point is that it did not kill it. That’s a small example of what 64-bit browsing is capable of.

It’s still a 32-bit world for web browsing?

Presently, yes. The vast majority of web sites will display best using a 32-bit browser. This is mainly due to the fact that plugins/add-ons run best (and sometimes only) in a 32-bit environment.

For those of you who haven’t use 64-bit Windows 7 yet, yes of course you can use 32-bit stuff in it without issue. All the browsers that don’t have 64-bit editions run just fine be it Chrome, Firefox, Opera or otherwise. Plugins/add-ons like Java and Flash also work fine.

When you do go 64, just don’t expect everything to be magically better, because it won’t be. What you can expect from native x64 programs is stability and not speed. This sorta/kinda goes along the same lines as adding RAM to your computer. Adding RAM these days doesn’t necessarily make your computer run faster, but it will allow you to run more stuff at once and more smoothly in most instances.

Like what you read?

If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below: